People have devised numerous ways to remind themselves of certain tasks or events. Many people have and still use physical media to write on, such as sticky notes and calendars. With the ubiquity of electronic devices, many people have turned to computers to help manage their to-do lists and keep a record of upcoming events. Numerous reminder and to-do applications are available, both for desktop computers as well as handheld devices, such as laptop computers, tablet computers, and “smart” phones.
However, the timeliness and accuracy of a notification provided to a user of a reminder application depends almost entirely on input received from the user. For example, if a user enters a reminder with the wrong date for an important event, then the user might not receive a notification of the event until after the event has occurred. As another example, if a user provides a generic description of a task (e.g., “send him an email”) in a to-do application, then, when the user later reads the description, the user might not remember who “him” is and/or what the content of the email should be. In other words, when it comes to reminder and to-do applications, the old adage of “garbage in garbage out” is applicable.
Moreover, users do not always have the time or willingness to set a triggering condition for each and every event that should trigger a reminder notification, and reminder and to-do applications may not be able to monitor each type of event or condition that may be a useful trigger. For example, for a reminder such as “remind me to call my mom after I hear from my sister,” traditional reminder and to-do applications would not monitor different communications types so that a reminder notification could be issued regardless of how the user “heard from” her sister.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.